WASHINGTON (AP)  A Senate Democratic leader Tuesday urged a Bush-appointed judge to recuse himself from cases involving enemy combatants and requested an explanation about information that might contradict his testimony about the White House's detainee policy.

"It appears that you misled me, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the nation," Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois wrote to Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

He urged Kavanaugh to remove himself from "all pending and subsequent cases involving detainees and enemy combatants." Kavanaugh's court gets more detainee cases than any other.

"Your lack of candor at your nomination hearing suggests you cannot approach these cases with impartiality and an open mind," Durbin wrote.

Kavanaugh declined to comment, but the court released a statement indicating Kavanaugh would not recuse himself from all related cases.

"Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation testimony was accurate, and Judge Kavanaugh will continue to carefully address recusal issues based on the law and facts of each case."

At issue is whether Kavanaugh, then White House staff secretary, misled the Senate panel during his confirmation hearing in May last year about how much he was involved in crafting the administration's policy on enemy combatants.

A Washington Post story Monday suggested that Kavanaugh told his White House colleagues in 2002 that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom Kavanaugh had clerked, would never accept any policy that denied American combatants a lawyer, as was then being considered by the administration.

Durbin, who first raised the issue Tuesday in an interview with National Public Radio, said the story appeared to contradict Kavanaugh's statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing.

During the May 9, 2006 proceedings, Durbin asked Kavanaugh about William Haynes, a controversial nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

"What did you know about Mr. Haynes' role in crafting the administration's detention and interrogation policies?" Durbin asked Kavanaugh.

"Senator I did not — I was not involved and am not involved in the questions about the rules governing detention of combatants. And so I do not have the involvement with that," Kavanaugh replied, according to a transcript.

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